1. Touch TV and other Man Machine Interfaces, Ser. No. 09/435,854.
2. More Useful Man Machine Interfaces and applications Ser. No. 09/433,297.
3. Target holes and corners U.S. Ser. Nos. 08/203,603, and 08/468,358.
4. Useful Man Machine interfaces and applications, Ser. No. 09/138,339.
5. Vision Target based assembly, U.S. Ser. Nos. 08/469,429, 08/469,907, 08/470,325, 08/466,294.
6. Camera based Applications of man machine interfaces (U.S. provisional application No. 60/142,777).
7. Picture Taking method and apparatus(U.S. provisional application No. 60/133,671 filed May 11, 1999).
8. Tactile Touch Screens for Automobile Dashboards, Interiors and Other Applications.
9. Apparel Manufacture and Distance Fashion Shopping in Both Present and Future, filed March 2000.
The disclosures of the above referenced applications are incorporated herein by reference.
not applicable
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The disclosures of the following U.S. patents and co-pending patent applications are incorporated herein by reference:
1. U.S. Pat. No. 4,629,319 (Panel Surface Flaw inspection, which discloses a novel optical principle commonly called xe2x80x9cD Sightxe2x80x9d).
2. U.S. Ser. No. 09/435,854 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,982,352, and U.S. Ser. No. 08/290,516 (xe2x80x9cMan Machine Interfacesxe2x80x9d), filed Aug. 15, 1994, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,008,000, the disclosure of both of which is contained in that of Ser. No. 09/435,854.
3. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/138,339 Useful man machine interfaces and applications.
4. U.S. application Ser. No. 09/433,297 More useful man machine interfaces and applications.
5. Camera Based Applications of Manxe2x80x94Machine Interfaces U.S. Ser. No. 60/142,777.
6. Picture Taking method and apparatus U.S. No. 60/133,671.
7. Methods and Apparatus for Man Machine Interfaces and Related Activity U.S. No. 60/133,673.
8. Tactile Touch Screens for Automobile Dashboards, Interiors and Other Applications, Ser. No. 60/183,807, filed Feb. 22, 2000.
9. Apparel Manufacture and Distance Fashion Shopping in Both Present and Future, Ser. No. 60/187,397, filed Mar. 7, 2000.
1. Field of the invention
The invention relates to simple input devices for computers, particularly, but not necessarily, intended for use with 3-D graphically intensive activities, and operating by optically sensing a human input to a display screen or other object and/or the sensing of human positions or orientations. The invention herein is a continuation in part of several inventions of mine, listed above.
This continuation application seeks to provide further detail on useful embodiments for computing. One embodiment is a monitor housing for a computer that integrally incorporates digital TV cameras to look at points on the hand or the finger, or objects held in the hand of the user, which are used to input data to the computer. It may also or alternatively, look at the head of the user as well.
Further disclosed are improved touch screens, and further discloses camera based sensing of laser pointer indications. The invention in several other embodiments, uses real time stereo photogrammetry or other methods using single or multiple TV cameras whose output is analyzed and used as input to a personal computer, typically to gather data concerning the 3D location of parts of, or objects held by, a person or persons.
2. Description of Related Art
The above mentioned co-pending applications incorporated by reference discuss many prior art references in various pertinent fields, which form a background for this invention.
Regarding use of laser pointers to signal or provide information to computers associated with TV displays, the closest reference I can find is U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,079 by Hauck xe2x80x9cComputer input system and method of using samexe2x80x9d (incorporated herein by reference). Hauck however, does not disclose function in a rear projection context as disclosed here.
Another reference which does use rear projection is U.S. Pat. No. 5,502,514 by Vogeley, et al, entitled xe2x80x9cStylus position sensing and digital camera with a digital micromirror devicexe2x80x9d. This however can only be used with a DLP projector comprising such a device, and does not use the simple TV camera based sensing approach of the instant invention.
No reference I have been able to find discusses the unique aspects of the disclosed invention relative to human interaction based information and the ability of the input data from the aiming pointer to be spatially encoded.